The Supreme Court has asked the health and social welfare secretaries of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir to appear before it and explain their failure in filing affidavits on baning manual scavenging. Taking strong exception to their failure in complying with its order for filing the affidavits, a bench of justices Swatanter Kumar and S J Mukhopadhaya said, it is high time that the Supreme Court order is taken seriously. The bench also imposed a cost of ten thousand rupees on each state.